


the love and the silence (always at the root of it all)

by jessicamiriamdrew



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, M/M, Multi, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-16
Updated: 2018-01-16
Packaged: 2019-03-05 13:30:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13388814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessicamiriamdrew/pseuds/jessicamiriamdrew
Summary: peacetime and happiness, too, require adjustment, especially when gabriel worries that he's holding michael and ash back from more than he can offer. some lorca reflection on the war +the three of them as a pairing.





	the love and the silence (always at the root of it all)

**Author's Note:**

> canon divergent bc fuck canon, also set post series aka in the vague future. references to ash’s trauma but way less explicit than canon. everyone is okay in my universe, albeit traumatized!
> 
> ash/michael/lorca, because the interactions of the three of them separately and together are so interesting. a lil angsty.
> 
> i don't really think there's any deliberate spoilers after the midseason break, since i'm aggressively ignoring all those parts of canon.

He feels old sometimes, watching Michael and Ash curled in on each other, when a flash of lingering pain steals his ability to sleep. They make sense together, complementing and grounding.

On these days, Gabriel considers sending Kat a comm to see if their old deal is still good, the two of them packing their bags and heading to a planet where no one knows who they used to be. Who they still are, he supposes, even though most days he just feels tired, not like the captain of a ship that was credited with winning the war.

War took so much from them all. The Federation thrives, new alliances forming all the time, but when Gabriel closes his eyes he’s haunted by a pile of bodies, a Kaddish list that seems unending, and the pleading hope of Avinu Malkeinu each year.

He shrugs his shoulders to no one other than himself, and goes to make a pot of coffee. They never could get coffee in space quite right, and Gabriel has taken to making his own custom roasts. Michael calls it a scientific hobby. Ash just smiles at him and asks for another cup.

The coffee mug Tilly gave him is sitting on the counter as usual, her artistic rendering of the mycelial network decorating its exterior. She’s got her own ship now, fast tracked through the rest of the Academy, and making a name for herself in addition to the one she earned in the war. Her kindness and joy know no bounds, her optimism unscathed by the horrors she lived.

“You shouldn’t brood,” Michael says, giving him half a beat to recognize her presence. She takes a step behind him and drops her head onto his shoulder. He leans his head against hers, before she twists away to drop a kiss onto his shoulder blade. “It isn’t becoming,” she says, her hand wrapping around the one not grasping for the coffee mug.

Their fingers slide together in a Vulcan kiss, though there’s no spark of psionic energy flowing. But Michael finds tenderness in it, and he can’t begrudge her anything. He likes the subtleness of it, the grounding of their hands together.

“I’m an old man,” he says, twisting his body around to face her. She’s as beautiful as ever, wisdom having made her even more so.

“Gav,” she chastises, “say what you mean.” Michael pins him with her gaze, and he’s lost all over again in her.

He doesn’t want to vocalize it; too afraid that this time she’ll accept what he says. That he’s holding them back from better lives they could be living.

She kisses him before he can answer, her hands settling to the waist of his robe by reflex. Michael smiles lightly against his lips, pressing a softer kiss there before she pulls back.

“We all suffered,” Michael says. Gabriel remembers the anxious nights he spent pacing the corridors of sickbay. When Dr. Culber threw him out, pressing a sedative hypo into his hand, telling him to go back to quarters and rest. She almost didn’t make it out of that sterile room, too torn apart by the latest atrocity of war.

What could they want with him, a man who was broken by the war before any of them met? The mental trauma that digs at his brain, no matter how many therapy sessions he goes to.

“Gabe,” Ash says, and Gabriel pulls his gaze from Michael’s exquisite eyes to Ash leaning in the door frame. Ash’s brown eyes are softer than they were when they met in Klingon captivity. Years of healing have done wonders for them all, Ash even more so, but the reflection of who they were then lingers. He reminds himself that it’s a pointless thought, that they wouldn’t be here if not for what happened before. That something poignant was born of the haunted days and nights.

Michael steps to the side, letting Ash join in to the circle, one hand immediately lacing through her fingers. Ash places his other hand on Gabriel’s face and Gabriel sighs under his touch. “If you left, there wouldn’t be someone else to slot in,” Ash says.

“Truthfully,” Michael says, “I’m not sure I could handle him without you. He’d try to drag me to karaoke night again.” Her tone is teasing, but she raises her hand joined with Ash’s to press a kiss to the top of their clasped hands. Some days are more delicate than others, for all of them, and when one of them is fragile, they’re all more careful.

Ash laughs, buoyant, a sound Gabriel thought he’d never hear again when the PTSD made him quiet, grappling with horrors that left Gabriel numb just to learn about.

“I love you,” Gabriel says, to Michael, to Ash, to both of them at once. Ash’s hand falls from his face, but the sensation is lessened by Ash’s lips against his own.

“We know that,” Michael says, and Gabriel smiles a little at the logical response. It’s strange, after everything, that’s happiest in the kitchen, the two of them in front of him.

“I love you too,” Ash says, more effusive, even as he moves out of the circle, his slippered feet the source of quiet scuffs. “I was personally thinking coffee in bed, if you’d make me a cup.”

These otherwise negligible things, these hints of normalcy, how they all adjust to each other, the opposite of stasis.

“I supposed I could be persuaded,” Gabriel says. He pulls Michael in, embraces her, and the intensity with which she returns it surprises him. Perhaps they’re all in need of reassurance, when for so long there were no guarantees.

Here, in this small, dimly lit house, the three of them have managed to find a kind of happiness. Maybe it’s time he stopped being in his own way.

**Author's Note:**

> did i set out to write tylorcham on this fine evening? i did not but here i am. i love all my good children who are going to be traumatized but survive the war and make happy lives!
> 
> briony made this far more readable than it was, thanks boo.
> 
> title, as always, is a modified dawes song lyric–my way back home
> 
> i’m referring specifically to the Mourner’s Kaddish here–a Jewish prayer recited in remembrance of the dead. With Avinu Malkeinu i’m referring to a prayer for the High Holy Days, and Yom Kippur, and the idea of atoning to Gd to be better in the next year A clean slate. {this is very simplified, but i just wanted to call on that theme of atonement and repentance.}


End file.
